Ex-nursing official gets 7 years for exam leak

A FORMER member of the Board of Nursing of the Philippine Regulation Commission was found guilty of violation of the PRC Modernization Act and the Anti-Graft Law for manipulating and leaking nursing licensure test questions in 2006.

In a 107-page decision, the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan’s Special Fifth Division sentenced Virginia Diolola-Madeja to six to seven years’ imprisonment and perpetually disqualified her from holding public office for violation of the Anti-Graft Law. She was also fined P100,000 for violation of the PRC Law.

Madeja was designated as the examiner in the 2006 Nursing Licensure Examinations (NLE) in the subject Medical Surgical Nursing (Test III) and prepared 500 questions composed of 100 situations with five questions each.

The court found no direct proof of how the questions were leaked but it was convinced by circumstantial evidence, which it said proved with moral certainty Madeja’s guilt on the leakage, which was said to have “tainted the integrity and cast doubt on the fitness and competency of the entire Philippine nursing industry.”

“The confluence of the aforesaid circumstances establishes beyond cavil that the accused was responsible for the circulation of her prepared test questions prior to the conduct of the 2006 NLE,” the ruling said.

An examination of the leakage notes revealed that it contained keywords and statements that specifically pertained to the questions she prepared in her test questions manuscripts.

“These questions were known only to the accused. As shown above, no other person accessed, or could have accessed, the test questions prepared by the accused for the 2006 NLE except her,” the court said.

1 Comment

Wouldn’t we love to see Senators Juan Ponce-Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla, Vice-President Binay, and ex-Mayor Dr. Elenita Binay..convicted, and sentenced to seven years, for their alleged crimes based on circumstantial evidence? This poor PRC examiner, Virginia Diolola-Madeja, gets sentenced for seven years in prison, for leaking test questions, based on circumstantial evidence. This conviction looks like, and feels like a token to mask the Sandiganbayan’s inability to go after the ‘big shots’..the real leeches, vermin and predators in the country.